> “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
So:
* They knew about it and quickly aided in the search.
* They did not broadcast the details of the collection to the public.
That seems like the right call to me.
This counts as a maritime accident so the NTSB will likely be investigating. They'd want the Coast Guard to locate and try to recover any pieces it could for the investigation anyway.
Besides, the vast majority of that money is already spent. The variable cost is actually quite low - largely just overtime and fuel cost. Often the fuel comes out of reserves that have to be rotated out anyway.
The US military, Coast Guard included, is an exercise in readiness. Responding to something happening is probably as good an exercise as any.
Maybe they would have continued to make the attempt. But unless it got snagged, the ballasts were designed to break off after 24 hours and rise to the surface.
Even a hopeless situation, people still want to see, and possibly recover, the surviving wreckage. The whole point of the original exploration was to view the Titanic wreckage. Various military spent enormous resources looking for MH370 for months/years.
And nobody with any shred of PR training would make a "heard a big boom, they're probably fucked" statement with all the world's media and the families listening. Nobody wants to tell the families that its over until they've got hard proof.
Don't quite know what was so great about this story. It was a textbook example of the catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance, and that was about it. The rest was just milking the drama as timed passed by with decreasing theoretical oxygen reserves.
> catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance
Icarus calling. People have been telling this story for thousands of years.
It seems like this story did that.
With that being the case it could be operational inertia. Sonar tech hears something weird, reports it to his boss. His boss puts in a morning update the next day, he sees about the sub on the news, but he can't just go sending this info off, he runs it up the chain, eventually a person with authority hands it off to the USCG who then passes it back down, and eventually someone in media gets ahold of it, or someone in an official capacity makes an announcement.
OOPS! nevermind.
I remember reading a series of newspapers articles about the Somalia battle that was later the subject of the "Black Hawk Down" movie. I haven't seen the movie so don't know if it covered the communication issue I'm about to mention.
The army had a convoy on the ground trying to reach the crashed Black Hawk helicopter. The navy had a surveillance plane watching. The plane would see that the convoy was heading toward and ambush but they could not talk directly to the convoy (I don't remember if it was because they didn't have radios with the frequency the convoy was on or if there was a rule against it) so had to relay the warning and recommended alternate routes back to their own base.
There that would go up through the chain of command until reaching someone who was able to talk to a counterpart in the army, then down the chain of command in the army and finally to the convoy. By then the alternate routes the plane had found were no longer applicable, and the convoy might have even already reached the ambush.
When they got past that it would just happen again farther along with another ambush.
If I am ever in a situation like this or under a fallen building or whatever I hope the rescue team will continue until death is 100% sure like starving or what and not because of some events happened.
I'd liken it to a space shuttle blowing up, the incident isn't compatible with life.
Obviously, an Orca rave.
hmmm
The media probably chose not to report it for the same reason the Coastguard didn't say "They're dead, let's go home" until they found confirmation.
My other thought was that if they showed up alive then it almost definitely was was a cover but I suppose I was on wrong on that front. Still think the story gave them the opportunity to drop a lot more sonar buoys and increase patrols and ‘look’ for something.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shtum
(English, from Yiddish)
Actually, they probably do like announcing to the world “we heard it”, to hype up their capabilities and spook their adversaries. That’s why you wait, you don’t want to say you heard it and be wrong.